Thursday, October 5, 2017

My first recollection of sago was the "Sago liap". Liap being small. They were small round hard compacted sago flour.

My maternal Grandpa Kong had a grocery shop and produce collection centre. Ibans come sell their rubber, and buy things from Grandpa. We saw the Ibans buy the sago liap and eat them at the shop.We took the sago liap and ate them. They didn't taste good, hard texture and dry. They stuck in our teeth.Grandma chided us in what would now be unPC. Years later, Sis E went to teach in Mukah and learn from the Melanaus to eat with peanut, ikan busu aka ikan belis. All the ingredients were raw, and I couldn't stomach them. May be I was already allergic to peanuts.Today, the Borneo Post published a photo on Sago symposium where my younger sister is involved. I wonder if Margaret was thinking of Grandpa's sago liap while she was researching it. There she is, 2nd from the left, Dr Margaret Chan.Photo shows Sis E's grand daughter eating Bario Highlands worms similar to sago worms.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

In 1960s, we moved to the Government Quarters at Padang Road near to the Sibu Prison.

We were a bunch of boys and girls. There was a Indian Temple, and had an eerie feeling. It was little, and there were no windows except sticks at the top of the wall. We climbed up to look at the figurines. The girls supported by the boys standing on their shoulders. Outside there was a murky uncovered well. The silliness in us spread rumours that someone had drowned there. Worse still, it was haunted and bidding us to look down and fall into the well. Childishness made us scared, yet not scared enough to climb up their tall spiky calamansi/lime fruits and their gardenia flowers. As we approach home, we threw away the flowers fearing mum might tell us off for going to the forbidden place.

I went back in 2013, my reporter took me there. The old temple was gone. In it's place was this school lookalike building.

Ann ChinKong Tong Kiong Hindu temple in situated at orchid road on the right side of girl guide building while Sikh building on the right side of race course road and prison is just nearby. Can see cow grazing in the compound of the Sikh building

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Do you have incidences or chapters in books that you remember?
I don't know about you, but I do. Tom Sawyer's whitewashing the fence
by Mark Twain is something I always remember how Tom tricked his
friends Huckleberry Finn and others (boys and girls) to paint his work
for him by pretending it was a lot of fun. They had to "pay" him for
this privilege. May be it is the constant reminder by all the fences
around me. Perhaps it is the phrase: Build bridges, not fence that is
deep inside the recess of my mind that has this impact.
I chanced
upon this gentleman painting his fence that just jotted my memory. I
studied this chapter when I was 12 and had just started my Secondary
School in Methodist School in Sibu. I can't remember if it was chapter
one. I never forgot. I can picture the teacher's face though I have
forgotten his name.